Do-It-Yourself Funerals

Of the nearly 2.5 million people who will die in the United States this year, 99 percent will travel through a funeral home. That’s a big problem, according to Joshua Slocum of the Funeral Consumers Alliance, a political lobbying group based in Burlington, Vermont. 



In this mini-documentary by Vocativ, we see how the $11 billion “death-care” industry is taking advantage of bereaved consumers at a time when they are most vulnerable—even going so far as to purposely mislead people into thinking embalming is mandated by law (it isn’t).  The Funeral Consumers Alliance’s goal is to change the way Americans deal with the dead, and it promotes do-it-yourself funerals that consist of a cardboard box, family, and little else.